'Annihilation' review: Female-led sci-fi thriller is intensely scary, unexpectedly beautiful

Peter Debruge
Updated

In an opening shot that may as well be a direct quotation from John Carpenter’s “The Thing,” a meteor originating from deep space streaks past the camera and strikes a lighthouse along the United States coastline. That is perhaps the one conclusion of which we can be sure in “Annihilation,” a beguiling, female-driven sci-fi/horror head-scratcher in which “Ex Machina” director Alex Garland finds still more ways to convince us that homo sapiens are at risk of losing their spot atop the evolutionary chain — although this time, he’s working on a far bigger canvas and courting an audience that may not be entirely ready to flex their imaginations to quite the degree this brain-teaser demands.

For those willing to put in the effort, “Annihilation” achieves that rare feat of great genre cinema, where we are not merely thrilled (the film is both intensely scary and unexpectedly beautiful in parts) but also feel as if our minds have been expanded along the way: It is, or at least could be interpreted as, an alien invasion story in which the extra-terrestrial entity has no form, but instead works with whatever it comes in contact with — like a virus, or cancer.

As such, it is fitting that the main character, Lena (Natalie Portman), should have some expertise on the subject, being a John Hopkins professor who specializes in “the genetically programmed life cycle of a cell,” and whom Garland introduces lecturing about the way cells create perfect copies of themselves, duplicating endlessly — an oversimplification that is nevertheless helpful to keep in mind as Lena proceeds to witness all kinds of surreal mutations along the psycho-scientific quest on which she soon finds herself, following in the footsteps of the husband (Oscar Isaac) who came back zombie-like from a similar mission.

Already, this is more than we ever learn about the narrator of Jeff VanderMeer’s novel, the first in his so-called Southern Reach trilogy, where each book provides a different person’s firsthand account of an intense trip into “Area X,” the quarantine zone surrounding the contaminated lighthouse. In print, “Annihilation” was presented as an unnamed biologist’s field journal, whose impossible descriptions and mounting paranoia invite readers to speculate that she may have been losing her mind. Whatever happens in Area X appears to change people, although Garland has made a significant change by suggesting that Isaac’s character, Kane, is the only person to have come back (whereas quite a few have returned in the book).

To call “Annihilation” an “adaptation” doesn’t really do either the book or the film justice. Written before the sequels even existed, Garland’s script seizes on key ideas from VanderMeer’s novel, but spins them in entirely new directions, using the source as a kind of leaping-off point (even the opening meteor detail is a bit of a departure, albeit one with rich other-worldly implications) from which five tough women have a chance to make first contact with this alien presence, and perhaps save the human race in the process.

Outfitted like Ghostbusters in drab khaki coveralls, shouldering oversized supply packs and guns massive enough to put down a H.R. Giger monstrosity, the team bravely undertake what they have every reason to believe is a suicide mission, crossing the barrier into “the Shimmer” — as they refer to the ominous, ever-expanding soap bubble before them, so called on account of the eye-catching opalescent rainbow patterns it casts across the thick swamp air (a neat trick that makes for a uniquely beautiful, and uniquely disconcerting, twist on otherwise mundane marsh locations, enhanced in such a way that they grow increasingly dazzling as the team ventures forth).

Skipping over their first hours inside the Shimmer, the movie never offers a satisfying explanation as to why they can’t leave or communicate with the outside world. But Garland gets away with it, since we’re as curious as his characters are to know what the lighthouse holds. Compared to their single-minded commanding officer, Dr. Ventress (a no-nonsense Jennifer Jason Leigh), and the three thick-skinned, hyper-intelligent military women along for the trip (Gina Rodriguez, Tuva Novotny, and Tessa Thompson), Portman’s Lena at first looks like she might be the weak link, only to find that she’s a resilient soldier-scientist in her own right, having previously served seven years in the Army — and no slouch with a rapid-fire cannon.

Garland constructs “Annihilation” in such a way that details of both the Shimmer and the group of women he’s assembled to explore it reveal themselves ever so gradually as the mission unfolds, and even then, almost exclusively through their actions (although there’s some good-natured sparring between them, too, as the characters challenge one another’s authority). It’s a smart approach that rewards the audience’s intelligence, rather than overwhelming them with conventional exposition, and keeps viewers leaning forward in their seats, searching for clues as to what the Shimmer represents — when in fact, its effectiveness will vary wildly according to how different individuals choose to interpret it.

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